


Torn and Mended

by Merfilly



Category: Elfquest
Genre: Gen, Moral Lessons, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 05:31:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1676504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cutter appeals to the one person who can help him. Moonshade reinforces a lesson to her future chief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torn and Mended

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crescent_gaia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescent_gaia/gifts).



*Help, please.* 

The sending was clear and strong, piquing Moonshade's curiosity as to why their chief-cub was sending to her. He felt as if he were at a small distance, within the Holt, but not in the upper branches of the Father Tree.

*Cutter?*

Her send was flavored by her curiosity, not wanting to climb down without all her tools for whatever it was that faced the chiefkin.

Cutter's return send was less clear and organized, with embarrassment as the prevailing emotions.

*I'm sorry. My new leathers…* his admission trailed off with the impression of a split along the back seam. It was more than enough for Moonshade to guess the rest. Those leathers had just been given to him by his mother, and to come back and admit that he'd already torn them would not be the best. Joyleaf would do little more than shake her head and mend them, but Bearclaw might be difficult. If his head was still woozy with dreamberry wine, or he had lost recently with those trolls, he might take Cutter to task for it.

Moonshade did not intend to let him completely off the hook, but she had a different lesson in mind for this split set of leathers. *I will meet you, Cutter.*

* * *

Moonshade did not have much trouble finding Cutter in a thicket. Nightrunner was burrowed down under one of the shrubs, whining slightly. She wondered if he was merely reacting to Cutter's discomfiture, or if he was possibly hurt. She sniffed the air, smelling nothing ill beyond the aromatic pungency of crushed leaves. 

"I am sorry," the cub told his elder, and she favored him with a small smile at his manners. Cutter was a bright part of their tribe, both joy for the legacy that he bore, and for his still fresh view of the world.

"Off with the leathers."

Cutter swiftly shed the torn pants, looking ashamed. Moonshade accepted them to inspect the rip. It had been the seam that gave, which made the repair that much easier, but it gave her pause. While she had tanned the leathers, Joyleaf had cut and seamed them for her son, to match his recent growth.

"How did they give way?" she asked, inspecting the sinew that had threaded the seam. It was badly frayed at the points the seam had given way, but not actually torn. That had been the leather, though the holes had been punched well away from the edges. Four holes had given way, which seemed very odd to her.

Cutter turned almost as red as Pike's hair. "I pulled too hard while I was bent over," he admitted.

"Pulled what?" Moonshade encouraged.

Nightrunner whined a little louder at that, and Moonshade took a moment to look over Cutter. His hair was mussed, and there were streaks of green and brown over his hands, arms, and even a smudge on his face.

"Nightrunner fell into one of those little cracks near the stream, where it had been so dry," Cutter admitted. "I pulled the seams when I was trying to help him get back up on the bank."

Ahh. That explained it all to Moonshade. "Your father expressly told you, and the pack, to steer clear of there. The land is not through settling from its parching. The rains we've had were not enough to fix the damage." Neither wolf nor elf seemed to be harmed, other than in dignity.

"There were dreamberries!" Cutter blurted. "I just wanted to get some for all of us."

"The Chief speaks to keep the Pack safe, Cutter. This is a lesson you must learn." She said it firmly, but pulled her kit free to punch new holes. For safe measure, she decided to add a piece of leather along the join. This would give him a little more room, and prevent it from tearing again too easily.

"For one day I will be chief, and I will speak words that cubs must hear and obey?" Cutter asked, with the look of one who knew the speech by heart.

Moonshade wanted him to learn it in his heart, though. "Yes. You will speak and the Wolfriders will listen, so that all are safe and cared for. It is the Way."

Cutter nodded, then looked at what she was doing a little more closely. "Why are you doing it that way?" he asked her. She did not think he was trying to redirect the conversation on purpose. She settled within the thicket near him, pleased he'd at least had sense enough to choose solid cover. It was never as safe on the ground as up in the arms of the Father Tree.

"Because the holes tore, I must make new ones. By adding a little more hide here, and joining it to the other side, your leathers will be stronger than they were."

Cutter chewed on that in his head for a long moment, then looked at her with solemn eyes. "Such as when an elf does disobey, and errs, the experience mends his behavior, and the backing leather would be the teaching from the elder?"

Moonshade blinked once in surprise that he had taken her craft, and the lesson here, and made them into one solid whole. "Yes." She looked through the kit she had brought, finding another piece of hide that she used mostly to guard her lap or to push the needles more easily. "But look at this? See how frayed the edge are? This was a part of a tunic, one that tore many times. And now I have no room to put holes near the edge. Sometimes, an elf who disobeys cannot be made stronger. We lose them. And then the Pack must howl for our loss, for that is also the Way."

Cutter nodded slowly as he touched the tattered edges, making it more real to his fingers and to his mind. "I will try harder."

Moonshade gave him a small smile for that. "You will." She did not, however, tell him that it was also the Way for cubs to disobey and learn lessons like these. She did not want to encourage him any further in his explorations along that path.

"Thank you," he told her quietly. "I will remember."

That was all she could ask for.


End file.
